Castro Emerges to Slam Bush on Ethanol. Is He Right?

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Castro Emerges to Slam Bush on Ethanol. Is He Right?

Fidel Castro has emerged from eight months of public silence to slam President Bush's born-again ethanolismo — and, implicitly, Brazil's new role as a biofuel "Mecca." Which raises two questions: First, can Bush use ethanol as a wedge to divide Cuba from Brazil? Second, does Castro's argument hold water?

In case you don't read Granma on a regular basis, the Cuban leader condemned "the sinister idea of converting food into fuel." Castro argues that turning food crops into fuel for First World drivers would cause serious ecological damage while shrinking food stocks and raising food prices in developing countries — leaving them hungrier than ever.

So far, Brazil's foreign minister denies that Castro's critique even applies to Brazil — despite Brazil's status as the world's second largest producer of ethanol and a recent agreement to boost ethanol imports to the U.S. At the same time, while expressing respect for Castro, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said, "He has some ideas that are outdated." Calling Brazil a biofuel "Mecca" for "all developed or developing countries," Amorim insisted that "ethanol's success has been proved in practice."

But Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley and bestselling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire, says Castro actually made some good points. "I was surprised to find myself in agreement with Castro," Pollan told me. "For example, shifting U.S. corn to ethanol production is wreaking havoc on the food economy in Mexico. Now that everyone is tied in together by things like NAFTA, our food prices affect theirs directly. There's been a lot of unrest in Mexico because of their links to our food-industrial complex."

As for ecological damage, says Pollan, "No one is counting the carbon released as we burn down forests to grow 'green' fuel." And despite the standard rhetoric, Pollan says, "This agricultural biomass is not free. All that 'waste' is very important to soil fertility. Where do we get it back? In effect, we're mining the soil. In some respects, it's not so different from the fossil fuel economy."

Finally, Pollan asks, "Why is ethanol so popular? Because it doesn't require us to change anything except which liquid we pour in the tank. It's essentially a one-to-one substitution. No one has to change the way they live or how much they consume." Why ethanol and not, say, conservation or public transit? Because ethanol doesn't rock the boat. "What important interests are against ethanol?" asks Pollan. "There aren't any. That should tell you something." After a brief pause, he adds: "Except Castro."